The Memory of Water

³¹ RED ISLANDS ON HER NECK

I find myself outside in the weak morning sunshine. I sip coffee and walk barefoot on the cool dewdamp grass, looking at how the plants have swelled and multiplied. Yellow arums, peach incas, and lavender grown wild and spindly. Their proliferation makes me feel shrunken. I hear the dog barking next door and, as I turn to look in the direction of the noise, I see movement behind the wall. I duck behind a shrub. I think it was the dog, but one can never be too safe. I inch my head around the leaves to get a better look and that is when I see her: Munchkin is back. She slithers easily through the drainage holes at the bottom of the wall and rattles her wiry tail at me. I wonder to whom she belongs, if anyone. She has me well trained and I crouch down and rub my fingers together to beckon her towards me. This time she comes. She drags her body along my knee, then chin-cheeks my outstretched hand. Her purr is too loud for her delicate build.

“Denise,” I call softly to the house, “come and look.”

When I don’t hear her coming, I call a little louder but this spooks the cat and she dashes back through the wall. Shinyblacklightning. Denise comes to the door.

“Did you call me?” she asks, “what is it?”

I stand up and dust my hands off. Pick up my cold cup of coffee.

“Nothing,” I say.

After checking the peephole for Edgar and his cunning associates, I slip out to the letterbox to get my newspaper. The post goes straight into my wastepaper basket. I delete all the messages on my phone. After the obligatory few hours in the den, scratching a hole in my notebook, I give up and read instead. I have always found it difficult to find enough time to read all the books I want, all the books that would help me become the writer I was meant to be. The writing usually takes over, but not now. Now I read at least a book a day. I am finally demolishing the swaying pillars of books I have piled up in my house. When I bought this place I thought I’d turn one of the rooms into a library but I never got around to it. They lie around the house in great toppling stacks, impatient to be read. Truthfully, I like that they invade every room in the house; it seems right, somehow.

Denise wakes me up with her tongue in my mouth. The den is dark and I can hardly make her out. I must have dozed off. She kisses the scar on my cheek, then pulls up my shirt and eats my nipples. I don’t know how long I have been hard. I put my hands on her head but she shakes them off. She straddles me on the chesterfield, lowering herself onto me. She is not wearing panties. I gasp at the suddenness of her hot crush. She rides me in slow arcs and I dream I am in a new bright place. She gets me to the top and just before she lets me slide down the other side, she raises herself off me, turns around, lifts up her skirt to show me what she’s got. I grab her butt cheeks; try to pull her towards me. I want to taste her, but she resists. Something buzzes through my body and I can’t take it; I wrestle her to the floor, pinning her down. She resists, breathing fast, like an animal, and tries to bite me. I hold down both her wrists with my left hand, and use my right to slip myself into her. Then I put my fingers around her neck, as if to strangle her, and she groans. I can feel her excitement grow as I apply more pressure. Her breathing is laboured. I start to move inside her. This is good. So good. I can write about this.

More weight on her throat and her back arches. I can feel her pulse in my palm. My body is electric with power; I build up and up until my mind dissolves and I fly out of my body for a sublime second. Denise stops resisting and I think she has come too until I get back to myself, and her, and see she is not moving.

I shake her still shoulders. I try to make out her face in the dark.

“Denise!” I yell. “Denise!”

Oh my God, oh fuck. Jesus Christ. I turn on the lamp near her head.

Her face is bloodless. Red islands on her neck.

A mental flash of light: Eve.

Eve, dead. Blue and leached of all goodness. Flash, flash, flash, till I can’t see what is in front of me.

“Eve!” I cry.

And then her chest is moving and I hear her breathing. I touch her chest and feel her strong heart racing. A laugh bubbles up from her; she takes my hand and kisses my fingers.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I say, taking my hand back and running it through my hair. She laughs again but there is sadness in her eyes.

“Are you okay?” I ask, touching her neck. She nods and pulls me down so that we are lying together. I am extra gentle with her as I rub her back, kiss her spine. I wait for her to go to sleep before I carry her to bed.